Silicon Valley Chapter | SLA

Information Ethics Town Hall Meeting

Please join the San Andreas Chapter for a Town Hall meeting to discuss information ethics on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., in the St. Ignacius Conference Room, 2nd Floor, Loyola Hall, Santa Clara University, 425 El Camino Real, Santa Clara. Light refreshments will be served.

Please note that this is election day and plan accordingly.

Program Description:
SLA is undertaking a year-long initiative through its chapters and divisions to look at ethical issues that members encounter in providing information services to their users and to determine whether SLA should develop its own ethics guidelines rather than continuing to rely on the ethics guidelines developed by ALA, SCIP, AIIP and ASIS&T. This Town Hall meeting will include a discussion of anecdotes and examples of ethical situations you have encountered, whether and how you have resolved them, and examples of information ethics in practice (or perhaps not in practice) at your libraries and organizations.

To provide us some background, Geoffrey Bowker, Executive Director, Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara University, will first speak to us about ethics in information service. Following his presentation, we will break into small groups for general discussion, sharing our stories, anecdotes and questions about ethics in using and providing information services. Wynne Dobyns, the Chapter's Ethics Ambassador, will summarize findings and suggestions for ethics guidelines and/or ethics resources that SLA could provide to share in a report to SLA headquarters.

Those who plan to attend should read the article, "A Framework for Thinking Ethically," posted at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html before the meeting.

Location:
St. Ignacius Conference Room
2nd Floor
Loyola Hall
425 El Camino Real
Santa Clara

Directions:
Loyola Hall is on the corner of El Camino Real and The Alameda, across from the campus. It has limited visitor parking. See the campus map at http://www.scu.edu/map/. For driving directions to campus, see http://www.scu.edu/map/parking/directions.cfm.

Registration:
This meeting is free; however, we do need a count for handouts and refreshments. Please RSVP by Monday, June 2, to Gloria Elia at [email protected] or 650-965-7900 ext. 100.

For more information about the meeting, please contact Wynne Dobyns at [email protected] or 408-446-4117

Information Ethics

What to do when two people want to use the single-user password available for an online service?  Or when you're asked to contact a competitor for information using your home computer or personal phone and not identify yourself?  Or when a user's colleague wants to know what information s/he has requested from you?  Perhaps you have encountered other situations in which you have wondered what was the "right" thing to do or whether the action you took was really OK.   What is ethical behavior in the workplace and how does it apply to using and providing information services?  For that matter, what are "ethics" and does everyone experience them the same way?

These are questions that SLA has decided to address in a year-long initiative through its chapters and divisions to educate its members on ethics.  By hosting dialogues, town meetings, surveys and reviewing reports from the trenches, SLA hopes to understand the ethics challenges members face and to identify concepts that should be included its own ethics code or set of guidelines as well as resources to assist members to resolve the ethics issues they encounter in their libraries and organizations.  Another major goal is to enable SLA members to become "ethics ambassadors" in their organizations, providing exemplary role models for others who also encounter ethics issues in their positions.

Information ethics has become a topic of increasing concern, one that impacts SLA members on a daily basis.  SLA currently refers members to the ethics guidelines of the American Library Association, the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP), the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), and the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) (following the article at http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-95/bjorner.html).   Realizing that these codes do not sufficiently address situations our members encounter, the Board of Directors wants to take the lead in recognizing the ethics of acquiring and using information and plans to draft a code of ethics or a set of ethics guidelines that addresses information ethics.  For this, they will rely on members' experiences, needs and suggestions.

The San Andreas Chapter will host a Town Hall meeting on information ethics on Tuesday, June 3, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Santa Clara University.  Geoffrey Bowker, Executive Director, Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara University, provide us some background on ethics in information service before we break into groups for general discussion of ethics issues we experience and how we resolve them.  There will be no charge for this meeting, and light refreshments will be served.  As soon as details are finalized, the meeting announcement will be posted to the Chapter's discussion list.   For a basic understanding of what ethics are, members should read the article, "A Framework for Thinking Ethically," posted at http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html before attending the meeting. 

Please plan to attend the Town Hall meeting on information ethics on June 3.  I look forward to a lively discussion.

Wynne Dobyns
Ethics Ambassador
San Andreas Chapter, SLA
[email protected]

San Andreas Chapter Tour

Join Chapter members for a tour of Santa Clara University's Harrington Learning Commons, Sobrato Technology Center and Orradre Library on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008. A patio reception will be held from 6:00-6:30 p.m., followed by the tour from 6:30-7:30.

Santa Clara University's 194,000 square foot Harrington Learning Commons, Sobrato Technology Center, and Orradre Library opened to the SCU community and the public on March 31, 2008. The new building is home to the library, IT, and Media Services departments and is designed as a flexible facility that can be adaptable to future changes in both learning styles and technology. More information is available at http://www.scu.edu/is/lctcl/index.cfm.

Tour Host:
Susan Boyd is Engineering/Math Subject Specialist in the Instruction and Research Services (IRS) division of the University Library.  She holds a B.A. and M.L.S from the University of Hawaii.  She worked in the library system of a telecom company prior to joining SCU in 2002. Susan is a member of SLA, ALA, ACRL, CARL and ASEE (Engineering Libraries Division).

TOUR:
Meet at the patio area outside the front entrance of the building from 6-6:30 pm. for a snack and networking prior to the tour. The tour will begin at the large "Books" sculpture in the front of the building (facing the Benson Student Center) at 6:30 pm.

This tour will be limited to 30 people.  

RSVP:
This tour will be FREE. However, you need to RSVP to have your name on the list. Deadline for registration: Monday, June 2, 2008.

Please call or send email reservations to:
Sandy Tao

510-919-0106

[email protected]

DIRECTIONS and PARKING:
http://www.scu.edu/map/parking/directions.cfm

http://www.scu.edu/map/parking/index.cfm

CAMPUS MAP:
http://www.scu.edu/map/

Visitors should enter via the Palm Drive main entrance, stop at the attendant station, and pick up a visitor parking pass to hang on their rearview mirror.  Then turn left and into the parking structure—where they can park in any visitor space.  If there are no visitor spaces open in the garage, check the map to see where else there is visitor parking or go to the attendant station to ask where other visitor parking is available.